Mike Wallace Is Here tells a fascinating cautionary tale, but tells it too late
Film Reviews Movie Review
As a profile of an important journalist, Mike Wallace Is Here works. Wallace laid the foundation for the sort of confrontational, probing TV interview that would dominate in the ’70s and ’80s. He coaxed truth and insight from major figures with a direct, fearless style of questioning, getting to the heart of people’s motivations and never settling for pat answers. For a time, hearing the words “Mike Wallace is here” clearly created some apprehension in the hearts of those who’d agreed to sit down with him, from world leaders (Richard Nixon, Ayatollah Khomeini) to pop culture figures (Oprah Winfrey, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Carson). It’s almost as if talking to him were a rite of passage and a personal challenge to be faced. Like him or not—and plenty clearly didn’t like him very much—people opened up to him, responding to his challenging questions.
Wallace’s fascinating career would have been enough to fill a feature-length documentary; really, just a greatest-hits compilation from his decades on 60 Minutes would make for an incredible history lesson. Director Avi Belkin makes artful use of mountains of archival footage, going back to Wallace’s earliest days, when he made the transition from radio announcer to commercial pitchman—great footage there—to finding his calling as a probing interviewer on a show called Night Beat. Wallace was witness to so many incredible world events that the film barely has time to give them their due. Watergate, the My Lai massacre, the civil rights movement, tobacco industry scandals—these are things that Wallace’s reporting affected in real-world ways but that only warrant glancing blows from the documentary because there are so many of them.
Mike Wallace Is Here covers its subject’s personal life in slightly greater depth. But only slightly. The death of Wallace’s son in a mountain climbing accident changes his outlook deeply, pushing him to focus on the more important aspects of his career, but that notion is explored for about as long as it will take to read this sentence. On occasion, the documentary finds deeper paths into Wallace’s psyche. In candid conversations, his 60 Minutes colleagues know him well enough to give him some semi-friendly grief, as when Morley Safer bluntly says, “Why are you sometimes such a prick?” But they’re also close enough to Wallace to get him talking about his suicidal depression—something the very alpha Wallace did his best to hide from the public. But again, there are so many things to focus on here that almost none of them can be explored with much depth.
And when Mike Wallace Is Here drifts into commentary on the state of journalism itself, it feels like reporting that a horse has escaped the barn 20 years after the fact. As interview subjects—especially political ones—learned to be more careful, journalists like Wallace became less vital to the national conversation. The documentary delivers glancing shots at the idea of constant news, journalism as a business, and the slide into partisanship, but it doesn’t hit those points particularly hard or often. The only time it has real impact is in conversations between Wallace and Bill O’Reilly that bookend the movie. The two feel in this presentation like good and evil twins: O’Reilly claims to have learned from watching Wallace, but it’s clear that he’s learned all the wrong lessons. “You have to be so provocative,” says O’Reilly, substituting bluster for intelligence, and blazing the trail for how awful things have gotten.
To be blunt—which Wallace, who died in 2012, always was—Mike Wallace Is Here is fascinating but scattered, and never quite decides what its target should be. Wallace had a deep, incredible career, and this documentary gets nobly beneath the surface considering its 90-minute runtime. But when it posits what effect Wallace and his generation of reporters ultimately had on the world, it’s unsure of itself—something that, in public anyway, Wallace never was.
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Does it cover his side hustle as the rapper Mic Wallace?** ♪♩ My name is Mic Wallace and I’m here to say,
that I cover the story in a som-ber way! ♪♩
“Like the My Lai MassacreOr many things that have occurrEd like the Emergency DepartmentWatergate was caused by a secret compartmentWoah
How they treated minorities left me feeling down under like KylieNow they doing a pale imitation with Bill O’ReillyYeah
You try to take me on in an interview you will chokeCause like the tobacco industry you’re plans are all up in smokeI’m a work of art, should be held up in exhibitsCause tell your girl, she knows I last 60 minutesAnd now journalistic integrity is ice coldCause I died in 2012, real end of the world.”And so on and so forth, I literally have no idea what this fella is so I just took this article at face value and ran with it.
Thing is, I’m not convinced that O’Reilly DID learn “all the wrong lessons” from Mike Wallace. It’s possible that Wallace’s act was always bad for serious journalism, but no one complained because it usually wasn’t their oxen getting gored. And now that it’s par for the course, everybody’s long ago lost their standing to object to it.
Wallace’s act was just fine when it was on once a week. But daily doses of the act via O’Reilly just made us all numb to it.
“It’s possible that Wallace’s act was always bad for serious journalism.” See CBS Reports “The Homosexuals” (1967).
This sounds like it would have been better if it was not made by someone not working at a 24/7 news network. Given that Colbert interview yesterday where Wallace was so focused on how people appeared and not on the actual details of the occasion, I do not think he learned anything from his own documentary.
This is the time I got to meet Mike Wallace. It’s kind of a funny story. Charlie Rose was also involved.Many years ago my first job in NYC was for a small documentary company. They did a lot of work with PBS. Every year channel 13 has a gala dinner where they honor a bunch of rich people and one TV person. They shoot interviews with the honoree and a famous person to air at the dinner. My bosses did the interviews and this year Charlie Rose was being honored. Because this was when he was moving to 60 Minutes they got Mike Wallace to interview Charlie.So it’s the day of that interview, we have two scheduled for the day and this is the first one. We’re unloading the gear at CBS studios. While that’s happening my boss gets a call from Charlie Rose’s office. Charlie had gone to the Cape or somewhere rich and white over the weekend and he had decided to stay a little longer. We’d have to reschedule.My boss, she tells us, and then she says, “Now I got to tell Mike Wallace we wasted his time”. Which I totally wanted to see so I followed her in. She explains to Wallace, apologies, he said something like, “Well it sounds like it’s this assholes fault”. He’s definitely pissed but doesn’t take it out on my boss, promises his office will reschedule.It’s a week later. We’re back at CBS. Mike Wallace is in the chair, made up, ready to go. Charlie Rose is late but on his way in a car. My boss sends me down to get him so he doesn’t get “lost”. Rose arrives, dude is tall. Asks me a couple questions in the elevator but clearly just here to get in and get out.We walk onto the set. Mike Wallace calls out, “You are so late. Do you know how late you are?”Charlie starts to make excuses about traffic. Wallace interrupts him, “You’re so late, we were supposed to do this a week ago”. Everyone laughed, Charlie Rose looked mortified. Afterwards the PBS executive there said, “I don’t think Mike Wallace likes Charlie”.
Meanwhile his surviving son shits on his legacy every damn night.
Eh, Chris Wallace is the closest thing Fox News has to an objective journalist. At any other network he’d be “the guy who gives the conservative viewpoint, but still sticks to the facts.” At Fox, he’s practically considered an enemy mole. Shepherd Smith is also pretty decent, but quite a bit less of a “hard” journalist.
I mean c’mon now, while a lot of what Mike Wallace did came with some bluster he was still a serious journalist who has a real resume that we can look back upon. Comparing him to Bill freaking O’Reilly is like comparing Muhammad Ali to Conor MacGregor
Wallace had a deep, incredible career….These are a lazy writer’s adjectives. Try harder.
“O’Reilly…learned all the wrong lessons” – touche’.